Phoenix: Lovesong The J Alfred Prufrock Mix
by karabair
Summary: Does she dare disturb the universe? X3 wasn’t the first time Jean Grey wrestled with her powers. Set about 10 years before the first movie.


Title: Phoenix: Lovesong (The J. Alfred Prufrock Mix)  
Rating: M  
Word Count: 1,948  
Disclaimer: Characters created and owned by Marvel, Fox, and other people I'm not.  
Summary: Does she dare disturb the universe? X3 wasn't the first time Jean Grey wrestled with her powers. Set about 10 years before the first movie.  
"It sounds to me like Jean had no choice at all." – Logan, _X3_

_Let us go then, you and I,  
When the evening is spread out against the sky  
Like a patient etherised upon a table_

The boy's eyes shine bright cold green, open and alive. There is nothing behind them. His head lies back against the hospital pillow. Dr. Ellis Vail stands by the bed, lecturing to twelve medical students, crowded into the room with their noisy minds. I am one of them, and I am not.

My name is Jean Grey. I am twenty-four years old.

My name is Phoenix. I am ageless and endless.

Together we understand. There is nothing behind the boy's eyes. We rub the edges of his mind like smoke against a window. We are angry for this boy, although we cannot yet say why.

Dr. Vail drones. ". . .no indication of organic damage. For up to sixteen hours of the day, his systems are fully operational. Yet the boy has lost the ability to perform one of humanity's most basic tasks. Left to his own devices, he cannot sleep." Vail talks on, slow and deliberate; most people think it's because he is so very serious. I know he isn't thinking about the case history at all. Instead, his mind settles on the four female students in the room, teasing out, in elaborate detail, what we would look like in all our stages of undress.

He has very peculiar ideas about corsets and garter belts. It has likely been some time since he actually saw a naked woman.

We block him out.

Instead, we slip into the mind of the nurse who is checking the small child's vitals. I learn that this three-year-old, Hiram Jones, stayed awake, continuously, for twenty days, before his parents brought him in for treatment. They reported that his behavior had become increasingly erratic and unpredictable, that his speech was incoherent, that he threw tantrums and refused food. _Just sounds like being a little boy if you ask me,_ thought the nurse. Imagining her own small grandson, she wished she were in Chicago with him, if only his mother weren't so stubborn. . .

We pull away, leaving the woman to her thoughts, and coast reluctantly back to Vail. He is explaining how the doctors experimented with sedatives, some of them largely untested on human subjects, and now – the man reports, all self-satisfaction - "Hiram is getting the ten hours of sleep that a child his age requires." He is telling us a success story. I want to believe such triumphs possible or why am I here? And yet -.

"He doesn't dream," I realize, and at the same moment I say it out loud. Not, as some would say, because my impulsive temper matches my red hair, but merely because I do not always remember the line between thought and speech.

Vail freezes, mid-drone and pivots slowly to look at me. "Miss Grey. Perhaps you would like to lead us today, with your vast expertise in the subject." His sarcasm drips, for all to hear, but no one else witnesses the fantasy in which he pushes me against the wall and reaches under my labcoat. He thinks that I would cry and kick, at first, but quickly surrender. This is what women like me really want.

He has an active imagination.

I smile.

I smile because he doesn't need to know what I know, because that is the way I was raised, and because I can think of three men who, if they saw what I am seeing, would be able to kill him with less effort than swatting a fly. "I only meant to say," I answer politely, "that many leading theories hold the unconscious dream function to be essential to maintaining the equilibrium of the mind. That dreaming is actually the only reason that we really need sleep at all."

Vail lowers his glasses, as though looking down on me, as if he doesn't notice that I am five inches taller. "Fascinating, Miss Grey. As usual. Irrelevant and slightly insane. Also as usual. But fascinating." The doctor stares at my mouth, and imagines pushing me onto my knees. I would give an extraordinary blow job, he thinks, if I would only shut up long enough, which he doubts.

Scott wouldn't actually kill him –- not unless he found a way to convince himself it was an accident. Still, there would be a shoving match, and possibly a broken jaw. Charles would think of a way to disturb Vail's own dream function, for the rest of his life – though the thinking, for him, would mean as much as the doing. He might even include in a lecture about how failing to permanently distort the man's unconscious mind, when we easily could, proves our moral strength. As for Erik. . .well, what Erik Lehnsherr would do isn't something I want to think about.

Besides. We don't need their help. Not anymore.

I smile, as though Vail's provocation is washing over me, and I answer. "Suppose that we could find a way to reroute dreaming through the conscious mind. Isn't it possible that the boy could actually receive the full benefits of sleep without ever having to close his eyes?"

Vail takes off his glasses and clutches his temples.

Cecilia Reyes, standing to my left, bumps me with her hip and teases, "Not much fun for his parents though."

"_Miss_ Grey." Vail raises his eyes in a look that encompasses Cecilia as well – in his mind, she's made up in flamenco dress with a fruit hat. She's pulling her clothes off like an X-rated Carmen Miranda; the half-Puerto Rican department head would find that image extremely fascinating. His eyes move around the room now, which is fortunate, because if the fantasy ended up with Cecilia and I together, he might end up with a heavy piece of equipment on his head -- moral strength notwithstanding. "Even if what Miss Grey is suggesting were remotely possible, the practical effects would be tantamount to deliberately inducing schizophrenia. I realize, Jean –" He looks back at me, savoring the use of my first name – " - that driving people crazy is a special skill of yours –" Several students in the room snicker. I do them a favor by not noting which ones. "However, I think even you might see that is not a practice one should voluntarily inflict on one's _patients_. The strain of separating dreams from consciousness would have devastating effects on the psyche. Simply put? The human mind isn't strong enough for what you're suggesting."

One of the sniggerers blurts, "Maybe a mutant could do it." Of the twelve students in the room, eight laugh.

Vail turns his wrath away from me for a moment, casting an angry glare around the room. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are talking about _science._"

He launches into a tirade we have all heard before, and that gives me time to race through the minds of the people who aren't laughing. Greg is easy. He's trying not to look at me. We had a few dates my first year -- after Scott and I had version forty-six of The Talk, and it didn't go well. I came out to Greg in the bleachers at a Yankees game. He kept asking me to tell what number he was thinking, and what would be the final score in the final game of the World Series. He begged me to get inside his head during sex, because he thought it would be "cool," as though my powers were a benign recreational drug. I ended up calling Scott for Talk number forty-seven. That was about twelve Talks ago, but I never went out with Greg again. Still, he's a good man. He doesn't want to hurt anyone.

"Science," Vail goes on, "is not formed by pundits and scaremongers –"

The second non-laugher gives me a jolt. Her name is Annette, and we have shared cold French fries in the basement cafeteria, mocking the same inane reality programs on its fuzzy television. Annette remembers a girl in the ninth grade, who acted like anybody else, you thought you could trust her, and then they caught her moving a pencil, just by looking at it. The other cheerleaders tied her up and left her in the woods, to see if she could levitate her way out of that. She never came back to school, Annette thinks, and good riddance.

I back out of that mind, quickly, and I'm with Cecilia, who is getting angrier and angrier. _It isn't worth it,_ I think at her. _This isn't the time ._

". . .terrorists with the ability to – manipulate magnetism? Does anyone even understand what that means? –"

_I know it's not,_ Cecilia answers without speaking. _Still. I kind of enjoy imagining Magneto showing up to strangle that asshole with his own stethoscope._ Now I put on my fake smile for Cecilia. She's never seen Magneto, doesn't really believe in him besides as a half-mythical figure on teenagers' T-shirts; he might be Robin Hood or James Dean or Che Guevara, and she doesn't really believe in them, either. Cecilia has no idea that I could rip the stethoscope from Vail's hands, myself, that I could do much more. She thinks my telepathy is a party trick, just as she imagines the force fields her body produces as something between a game and a nuisance.

It isn't natural for us to think of our gifts as weapons. That impulse needs to be taught.

_Yeah, a Magneto cameo would be kind of fun_, I lie.

". . .and vigilantes running around in leather pants shooting laser beams out of their eyes . . ."

I turn back to Vail and he doubles over, grabbing his forehead.

It's childish, I know. But some things are sacred.

Vail's mysterious sudden headache speeds our dismissal. He storms off with a parting glare as though this were my fault – which is both true and, from his point of view, unjust. Greg claps my shoulder and murmurs in my ear. "He's right about one thing. You make people crazy."

I roll up my tongue and stick it out at him. He staggers into the hallway, pretending he's been shot. Cecilia and I head the other way, and I try to assure her. _He's a good guy. A lot of them are. We aren't the only ones who think Vail is out of line._

She gives me a hard look. _Doesn't that make it worse when we don't speak up? Nobody's changing Vail's mind, but the others. . ._

_It's not the time. We have to pick our battles. I learned that from. . ._ We step out the front doors into a chilly night. Now we're alone and I can speak out loud, which gives me an excuse not to finish the thought. "I didn't let Vail get away with it. I gave him a migraine."

Cecilia pulls up short and stares at me. "I knew it."

My stomach drops. "Knew what?" I'm not in her mind because she's my friend and it wouldn't be fair; also, it lets me play innocent convincingly, but I have a sinking feeling that she knows.

She lowers her brow at me, and taps her foot. She doesn't want to speak the words and so I open my mind back up to her. _You're stronger than you pretend to be,_ she tells me. _I know who you are._

"I'm Jean Grey. The same person you've known since we've been in school. Just Jean."

_Bullshit,_ Cecilia answers. _You're Marvel Girl._

The name surprises me, and I have to smile as I tell her the truth.

"Honestly. No one has called me that in years."

I am Jean Grey. I am Phoenix. We are eternal.


End file.
